Garlic Harvest

This weekend I finally got to harvesting the garlic in our raised beds. I’ve been impatiently waiting for this for months. I planted the little baby bulbs all the way back in the very early fall and watched them grow all through the year; their green tips getting taller and taller over the hay that kept them warm under our light snow this winter.

This was definitely a long wait for me, and most of the gardening web sites left me feeling confused as to how to know when to harvest. Most advising to dig up the bulbs and check, to see how they are growing to know when they are ready. But still didn’t really tell you how you would know, when you dug them up. But then I stumbled on a tip somewhere in the interweb world, that said that the leaves start to streak yellow when the bulbs are getting ready to be harvested. Yes, this! And my plants had started doing this just the week before. The leaves streaking came at the perfect time, since I have to get my summer plants in and I just ran out of time.

I decided to dig up everything, but the two Elephant Garlic bulbs I planted, since they still have no yellow streaks on the leaves, I’ll update you when they come in. Because our garden is so small just right outside our townhouse I planted the garlic patch really tight and compact. Just two squares, each 1×1 ft. In the tray pictured you can see the garlic bulbs from just one of the squares. I thought it was pretty impressive for such a small space!

I managed to braid three long garlic braids and one baby braid, not to shabby for my first time braiding garlic. Which I learned thanks to one of my favorite blogs Thy Hand Hath Provided, you can learn how right here.  Now I’m drying the garlic until the outer layers are papery and its hanging from the drying rack in my dining room, along with catnip, some oregano, sage, and spearmint it smells delightful. All we have to wait for is the Elephant Garlic. Check back soon I’ll be cooking the Elephant Garlic Scapes.

Art Photo: Swiss Chard

While most people plant Swiss Chard in their gardens to eat all spring. I plant it for its amazingly vibrant color. I love its bright burst of hot pink, orange, red, or yellow in the garden. And even though I don’t personally like the flavor of the leaves, they taste like a mix of spinach and celery, they really come in handy in flower arrangements and look amazing in planting beds. I especially like the leaves on their own in a simple glass vase, and the foliage is so beautiful with the crinkled deep green leaves threaded with neon color it always adds interesting variety into a more complex arrangement.

Small Scale Indoor Gardening

The indoor closet garden is exploding, with a deep heady fragrance, that smells like a hot-house, coming from the very center of our home. It’s filled with all sort’s of yummy edible vegetables. From the sweet pea’s climbing up the ropes that I hung from the hanging rails that the builders put in, I don’t think when they were designing a hanging closet they ever imagined sweet pea’s growing from them, to the budding tomato’s that are now starting to get the very first of their fruit, basil, and peppers.

Each week I get 5 maybe 10 big pea pods off of the pea plant not a ton, but it’s just getting into its big production period and it’s nice for topping on salads. Plus the wonderful smell of the flower blossoms is a great treat. Next time I think I will pick a variety with a larger crop, even if it takes longer to get to its harvest period. These sweet pea’s had a really quick time to harvest.

The other tip I would recommend is to always keep your lights LED 3-5 inches above your plants. While the plants will still survive with them even a few feet above your plants, they wont have the super growth you’ll see with the plants nice and close to the lights. It’s hard to manage keeping everything this close when you have plants which are big like the tomatoes and peas, and small, like some of my pots of basil, so I have been trying to stack pots together and pot things doubled up.

The weird thing about our garden is that the only light coming from the room is a deep dark fuchsia. It seems alien, or like something you would imagine seeing in the far reaches of space, or on a Sci Fi show. I love it. I think the coolest part of the LED UFO lights that I use, is how they confuse your eyes, while you’re in the room everything is so pink, the leaves are black, blue, or white if they have died back, but once you leave the room everything white turns a strange yellowy green. It’s trippy, until you get used to it.

I’d like to keep expanding our indoor garden, in the next few weeks we’ll be adding some Genovese basil, as well as some cutting flowers. I can’t wait to see how these Tigerella tomatoes develop!

Early Dividend Broccoli

Today I got to harvest the first florets from our broccoli plants. They’ve been growing since late August, maybe early September. And they have gotten to be absolutely humongous. I’ve never grown broccoli before, but I didn’t do anything special, except to put them into my favorite Lucky Frog soil. I bought Early Dividend starters at our local organic plants store and I’ve been so happy with these beautiful plants. One of the best things about them is that after the main head is harvested big side flowers will form. Keeping you in broccoli for weeks and weeks. I took some pictures of the raised bed so you can see how big they’ve gotten, next to them I’ve planted garlic, which will be covered with a thick layer of hay by the end of the weekend to protect the bulbs from frost.